okay, so this is the deal... our basement flooded about a week ago because our sump pump wasn't hooked up... washer and dryer are down in the basement. hubby goes down to fix sump pump and gets curious about the condition of the appliances... he tries to start the dryer.of course it didn't work... so i need help figuring out what is wrong with the dryer. we have a frigidaire gallery front load electric dryer, about ten years old, maybe a little less.when i turn the knob to any cycle, it sounds like it's trying to turn on, even before i turn the on switch-thing... nothing happens except for the loud noise which lasts for 20 seconds or so and will come back on automatically every couple of minutes if i don't switch the cycle knob back to the off position. i tried to flick the start knob during the process which did nothing either. please help me before i take this dryer apart and REALLY screw it up!

Motors have two windings. A start winding and a run winding. It takes both of them to get the motor to star turning. Then the start winding has to drop out. This is done by a centrifugal switch in the motor. It sounds like just the run winding is being energized and it can't do it alone. With the rotor not turning the run winding is pulling maximum current and would burn up. There is a thermal circuit breaker in the motor that senses this and shuts off the power. As soon as it cools down it will try again.